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Please visit the Online Edition forum on the QuickBooks Community Website.

Hi, my name is Melanie Hall and I've been working in the QuickBooks Online Edition Support team since 2001. While I get to see Online Edition through the eyes of our users every day, recently I've become a user myself. I have been volunteering for a small non-profit organization called Trekking For Kids.  I set up their QuickBooks Online Edition company and am now also helping to do some donation entry.  (I have a new-found appreciation for you bookkeepers and treasurers.  This is a lot of work!)

I thought I'd share some ways that we've found to make QuickBooks Online Edition work for us. 

 

1. Class Tracking- Each volunteer raises funds for an orphanage that we’ll be visiting next week in Peru.  We set up each volunteer as a “class” and when we receive donations, we assign that donation to the volunteer that solicited the donation using the Class field. This allows us to run a Profit & Loss by Class and quickly see how much money each volunteer has raised. (The Class Tracking feature is part of the Business Package, but non-profits can use the features in this package for free.  Contact support if you are a non-profit and are not sure if you have the free Business Package.)
2. Emailing Reports- Periodically we send individual and group donation reports to the volunteers using the Email button at the top of each report.   This helps them keep track of how much money they still need to raise. 
3. Customizing Sales Receipts- When donations are received, we enter them as a Sales Receipt, even though it’s not really a “sale”.  We have customized the sales form like this (go to Preferences, then to Sales Form Delivery and click Customize):

• We entered Receipt of Donation in the Title field in the Header Information section.
• We left the Form Type Label and the Form Number checkboxes blank so that the term “Sales Receipt” would not be printed. 
• We checked the box for printing the Payment Method in the Fields section.
• We checked the box for printing the Description and named that field Donation Description. We also checked the box to print the Amount.
• We put our website address in the center of the Footer.

What ways have you found to make QuickBooks Online Edition work for you?  Feel free to share your ideas here at our User to User Forums or here on our Team Blog.

From our posts regarding training, we received many inquiries regarding questions about the product. Although I was not able to respond to each question individually via the blog, I wanted to make sure that you know we do have a way for customers to get answers to their questions. For those questions we did receive via the blog, I set up a case in which our agents responded to the questions directly.

Part of the great experience of QuickBooks Online Edition is our highly qualified Support and Sales agents. The support we provide is part of the your trial and subscription, so it does not cost you to contact us.

You can contact us via the internet in one of three ways:

• You can log into your QuickBooks Online Edition company and click on the "Support" link located in the bottom right of the screen.  Type in your question and the best way to reach you (email or phone) and we will try and get to you within 30 minutes.
• You can provide the same information at: http://supportqboe.com/
• You can email us directly at:  serviceconsulting@quickbooks.com

We are open from 6:00am to 6:00pm Pacific Standard Time, Monday through Friday.  But, we do have limited staffing in the early morning and evenings and even on the weekends, so we will try and get back to you as soon as possible, just not within 30 minutes.  So, don't hesitate to send in your question, we will get back to you as soon as possible.  And the best part, no waiting on hold forever hoping someone will answer your call.

Do you have questions to help you decide if QuickBooks Online Edition is the right product for you?

You can give us a call and talk to one of our world-class Sales Agents at:

800-267-5519

I first want to thank everyone for the great feedback we got regarding the way you would prefer to receive training.  Some of the modes of training you asked for were:

• Live lecture-style webinars
• On-demand training (online tutorials, recorded webinars, etc.)
• Instructor-led training - In person

Based on your feedback, we are working on producing some webcasts and other on-demand trainings.  We will be posting them at:  http://oe.quickbooks.com/support/training_resources/webcasts.cfm.

As we move forward, if you have specific topics you would like us to focus on, please let us know.

Again, thanks for your feedback and we will be working hard at meeting your needs for training.

I wanted to introduce myself and the newly formed QuickBooks Online Edition training team — Stephen Bryant, Melanie Hall, and Gary Curtis. 

We have been hard at work for the last several months preparing our Support agents so they can give you the best help possible.

In spite of the great reports we hear from our customers about the fantastic support, we are also hearing that our customers are interested in training.  I am writing to you to ask for your help. 

There is a wide range of training that we could create and offer, ranging from “how to” topics to “tips and tricks” for QuickBooks Online Edition.

What type of training do you want?  Please tell us where you need our help!  For example would you like a training on “Tips and Tricks: Moving faster through the screens, using multiple windows, etc.”

How would you like the training to take place?

-           Self-paced online demos/tutorials

-           Live lecture-style webinars presented online with audio conference

-           In-person, instructor-led training at a hotel or training center

You can submit your responses to this blog, or, send them directly to me at:  QBOELearningCenter@intuit.com. 

I'm Catherine, and I became the product management leader for OE in July 2005. I've been with Intuit since 1992 and helped ship the first version of QuickBooks Desktop. In all my jobs (Tech Writer, QA Manager, Product Manager, Group Product Management Leader), I have always been most passionate about making accounting quick, easy and helpful to small business owners. (My husband is a general contractor who knows a lot about building, but very little about business finance).

My job on the Online Edition team is to work with our experienced team and our customers to set short and long term plans for OE.

Here's the kind of information we use and weigh to determine the next features.

Take care of our existing customers
To decide what's best for them:

• We visit customers. While users often tell us clearly what they need most by calling or writing, occasionally we observe something they're doing that's hard and slow that they never thought to ask us for, and we figure out a way to fix it. Plus, visits make the lives of small businesses more real for everyone on our team, so we have a context for why what we do matters so much to you.
• We ask our support reps what they're hearing the most. While our support team is truly outstanding, it's better if you don't need to contact us at all because things just work for you.
• We read your suggestions. We read the suggestions you give our support folks, and we read the blog comments and forums to see what you're saying and asking (or screaming) for.

Attract new customers
Of course, we want to gain new customers, so we also figure out what we could add that would be important for folks who are turning away from Online Edition today. To figure out what we can do to gain new users: We ask why people abandon the trial. When things rise to the top as reasons people abandon, we add those to our list of possible features to add. We try to determine who looks at OE and decides that they don't even want to try our product. While those people are harder to get at, we do try to understand what's fundamentally wrong or missing from their perspective.

Keep our product healthy
Once we have a good list of things we could do to make existing users happier and to attract new users, we still have to add things that our customers don't see directly, but that are still important to our business, like improving our billing system. We also have to invest in other areas of our technology and infrastructure to ensure that we have a platform we can work with for years to come.

A dose of reality
Our number of engineers is growing, but as all of you in business know, you can only do so much with the people you have, so we have to go through the painful process of narrowing the list. We take our (now long) list and look at how the various choices fit with our long term strategy, with Intuit's long term plans, and with the engineers we have available in coming months and what they're best at. We mix all that together, add some insight about which missing features cause the most pain for our users – either because they're things that come up all the time or because the pain is so horrendous that even once a year is a nightmare -- and eventually we come out with plans for the next three years or so. We're not rigidly married to a long term plan. It's out there so we have a direction. But, of course, things are always changing. We keep talking to you, visiting you, reading what you write, and staying on top of what new technologies could do for you, and we adjust as we go along.

What we need from you
Your comments! Many of you write in with questions and suggestions, and we do read them. Hearing from lots of you is important, since we have to be careful not to act because one or two people are loud, but to make sure we're doing the best thing for our entire existing and potential audience. So keep your comments and suggestions coming! They don't go into a black hole. They go right to our ears. And when you write, please include your email address and/or phone number. When we're considering or working on something you've requested, we like to call to learn more about exactly what you're trying to solve so we can create the best design.

ok, this may seem a bit, err, marketing-ish, but we need some quick votes on which of these three tag lines best resonates with you. We'll listen to you and to our employees and pick a winner in a few days. We'll use the tagline in many areas of our marketing to quickly/succintly convey our value.

The choices:

• The power of control, the freedom of access.
• Just like you, we're always on.
• Control your finances. Free yourself.

Thanks for the help!

We're in the middle of investigating what features to build in our releases after our July release.

One important group of customers to us are accountants and bookkeepers. We know that accountants generally want what their clients want, however, they also have specific needs due to their profession they'd like to see included in OE.

So if you're an accountant or a bookkeeper and have ideas around where you'd like us to improve, please respond to this blog post and tell us how.

Thanks!

<Post script written by me today, 1/6: The outpouring of thoughtful responses is terrific. In addition to this blog, we now have a dedicated site to input your ideas so we can review them. It's more tailored to your needs and to our investigative needs as well. I encourage you to input your ideas there, you'll love it!>

We hope this year's holiday card makes you smile.  For a special treat, make sure your audio is turned on.

Happy holidays and best wishes for the new year from the entire QBOE team!

On November 10th I attended the annual QuickBooks Accountant Conference hosted by Doug Sleeter in Las Vegas. This was my second year.

And what a difference a year makes!

Every year our friend Doug puts this on for QuickBooks' most passionate Accountants to come and learn about what's the latest and greatest from us - and to connect belly-to-belly with the senior leaders and others from Intuit. This years' conference was just about twice as big as last year - I think around 300-400 Accountants.

But the real difference for me was what Accountants said about Online Edition. I had a one hour presentation with our UI leader Shara Barnett to share what's new with QBOE, such as the launch of our Online Payroll service. I started by asking the audience "How many have clients on OE or have tried it?"...and most hands shot up! Last year I asked this same question and I think there might have been 10 people in an audience half the size who said same.

Top Comments from audience:

• You have excellent Tech Support
• Will we provide mobile phone access to QBOE?
• Our reports are “clunky”...are we going to fix them?
• Export into Excel “not smooth”
• Lack of sophisticated Sales Tax Capability
• Nice to be able to have multiple templates for invoicing

Are you an Accountant reading this? Tell me your issues and wishlist by responding to this post.

Also and just as importantly, last year we had numerous, pointed questions about the security of our system - and this year we didn't have a single question or comment.

Has online accounting entered the mainstream accountant's toolkit yet? Not really, at least not for many. But does it seem like many more accountants tipped over to Online Edition in the last 12 months? Absolutely! It was a great feeling.

Just wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving. This season is our first year with our new daughter and I'm personally very thankful for her coming into our lives.

To lighten up a bit, I found Scott Adams' blog (he's the creator of Dilbert) where he shares what he is thankful for this Thanksgiving...this cracked me up and I hope you too.